


you thought that you two were something unbreakable (the broken glass broken hearts debug)

by feralphoenix



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Break Up, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Polyamory, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 10:18:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7357312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(But the cracks were there from the start, and you can't ignore them any longer.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	you thought that you two were something unbreakable (the broken glass broken hearts debug)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ang3lba3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ang3lba3/gifts).
  * Inspired by [you thought that you two were something unbreakable](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6292321) by [ang3lba3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ang3lba3/pseuds/ang3lba3). 



> _(In your tragic wedding gown with your long hair hanging down_ – we won’t destroy you)
> 
> op said in their author's note that they couldn't bear to decide why jade and dave were breaking up, so i took the liberty of filling in the blanks.

“Yeah, he gets like this sometimes,” Karkat says, picking at dandelion fluff. It’s gray out today, and you and he are lying on your backs looking up at the endlessly morphing cloud formations, him listening to you vent with a shocking lack of the usual inventive invective. “It’ll blow over. It always does. I mean fuck, not even a Strider can keep up that level of bugfuck intensity forever.”

He’s right, and you know it; sometimes Dave just—goes off for a while, gets bitey and angry and awful. And it’s not just with you, either; his relationship with Karkat’s about a billion times less volatile than yours is, and even though that’s an end of the V you make that you don’t have much to do with, you see the fallout on Karkat’s end too. The bags under his eyes get deeper, he gets simultaneously crankier and quicker to back down.

And the thing that Dave and Karkat have had has—well, it’s been going longer than your relationship with Dave, probably, even if you count the years of awkward crush that you harbored on him and then on Davesprite as a preteen on an island and then a teenager on a ship. They got close on the meteor and stayed close after the new universe was made, and it took you longer to pursue something more romantic with him too, after all.

You take a breath to blow your own dandelion clock, then flop down into the grass instead, closing your eyes and sighing. Maybe it’s Dave’s fault for his own unpredictable mood shifts and their frequency. Maybe it’s yours, for not being as understanding or forgiving as Karkat can be, not being able to make yourself that vulnerable.

“It does blow over,” you say out loud, still not opening your eyes. “But there’ll always be another one.”

There are carapacians on the other side of the field, playing some game, their activity a background buzz in your ears. Karkat grunts in response to you, as if to say _sure, fair enough._

 

 

“Dave has been through a lot,” Rose tells you, her voice mild, her expression unflappable. She goes right on knitting as if she has not a care in the world. “We all have, but Dave—and Dirk too—have a lot of things that they’re still trying to process. But you know that. You’re not here about probable cause.”

You scrunch up your nose and make a face at her. Rose doesn’t bat an eyelash.

You’re sitting across the table from her to complain because she’s available and because she’s your best friend aside from John (who would just laugh and say _ew_ ) and Jane (who gets jealous that you have a relationship at all, even if it’s a dysfunctional one). You’re sitting across the table from Rose because she and Kanaya have their fights from time to time, but they always seem to come back stronger for them, like it’s just some new echeladder for them to climb.

You’re the one whose aspect is supposed to be Space, but sometimes you want Rose to draw you a road map labeled How To Get Here From Where You Are. She’s the Seer. It seems like something she could do.

“Yeah, but what about _my_ issues, Rose!” you complain, ears pinned back as you throw your hands up in the air. “Yes! Dave’s brother messed him up super bad and he’s still struggling to deal with it and he needs time and patience and all that good stuff. But I’ve been living on my own since I was _little,_ I lost all my friends and spent _years_ living all by myself. I’m messed up _too._ Why is Dave the only one that deserves any care or sympathy? Why is it only _ever_ ‘boo hoo hoo poor Dave’ and no ‘boo hoo hoo poor Jade’. That is what I would like to know.”

Rose goes on knitting, unruffled. “It certainly is something you’ll have to decide how to balance in the future.”

You groan and sink down in your seat, resting your face on the table. “I should’ve known I wouldn’t get a straight answer out of you.”

Rose smirks. “Ah, yes. Aside from the obvious quips I can make here about any application of the word ‘straight’ to my person—” you groan, making more of a show of being angry than you really are “—one must always keep in mind that I am simply an armchair psychologist. That’s a far cry from being a trained professional.” She loops her needles through her yarn, slender fingers and painted nails steady. “I believe in you, Jade. You’ll work this out however you need to.”

That’s all well and good, you think, but you’re not sure anymore what your needs really are.

 

 

Terezi slouches back on the sofa, all sharp-toothed grin.

“I despise John Egbert platonically with all the vive and fervor my pump biscuit can manage,” she tells you brightly, “but here I find myself pressed upon to repeat the advice he so kindly passed on to me! Which is: You don’t need him.”

You could press her on that _platonically_ if you wanted to, given that you _know_ clandestine hate makeouts are totally a thing that have occurred, but you press your lips together and don’t. The Pyrope-Serket living room is an explosion of raucous color, disemboweled dragon plushies and broken magic 8 balls in mountains, flarp handbooks and post it note back and forths slapped over every surface. Your eyes keep falling to the sparkly ballet flats Terezi copied off your god tier ones lined up next to Vriska’s sneakers near the door, one incongruous spot of neatness among the clutter.

If anyone ought to be able to tell you what to do about Dave, you’d figured that would be Terezi, who also loves a hurricane in the shape of a person but who unlike you appears to be thriving doing so.

Vriska and Terezi have murdered each other, have dragged each other inadvertently to their respective deaths, in hundreds of thousands of timelines. When Vriska, the alpha timeline one, finally made it back years late from her triumph over Lord English, Terezi screamed and picked Vriska up and twirled her around, both of them laughing, both of them crying.

Terezi must catch you staring around, because she leans in conspiratorially. “Let me tell you a secret, Jade,” she says, voice still the same volume. “I don’t _need_ Vriska. I love her, we help each other, but I don’t _need_ her, strictly speaking. I do, however, want her! I myself have gone to a great deal of effort to keep her alive and with me because that is how I am happiest.

“You don’t _need_ Dave Strider any more than you _need_ anyone else. The question is, do you _want_ him?”

You make a face and shove her away. “I don’t know,” you answer honestly.

Terezi raps your shins with her cane. “Then perhaps you should make an effort to figure that out!”

 

 

“Oh, dear,” Calliope says, patting your shoulder unhappily. “I do envy the rest of you, sometimes, for your romances. They seem like such fun sometimes. But it’s awful that you have to hurt so much, and I’m sorry.”

“The worst part is that sometimes I don’t know if I ever even really loved him,” you say, and wipe your face. “There were so many other Jades who loved their Daves, so many other doomed timeline mes, and I’m the one who lived. Even after talking to the other you and to Davepeta, I feel like—like I have to make up for everything they didn’t get to do, you know?”

“I know,” Calliope says in a small voice, and she does.

“But sometimes I feel like I missed my chance to really love Dave after all,” you say, pinching the bridge of your nose. “Or like somehow I grew out of it and I don’t know how to get it back. It’s so frustrating! And embarrassing!! God, he’s doing my laundry at my house right now because I yelled at him for not doing his chores and he wanted to make it up to me, he’s my friend, and here I am planning to break up with him.”

The hand keeps patting your shoulder, cool and scaly and comforting. “It is sad to let go,” Calliope says. “But if this is only hurting you both—if you think it would be better to—then it’s all right to, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” you say, and grit your teeth. “I hope so.”

 

 

You’ve only been yelling at Dave for half a minute, but all of a sudden his face crumples like wet paper, and he sits down hard in the mud, letting the light drizzle splat on his shoulders and into his hair and over his face.

“I’m sorry,” he says, toneless, even though he was so adamant ten seconds ago that he’s not to blame for any of this.

You cut yourself off mid-complaint, sigh, and sit down next to him. Your skirt’s too thin to deal with the mud; it’s cold and wet and gross on your butt. The annoyance is minor, though, when closure and catharsis are both so near.

“I’m… well, it doesn’t really matter what I am at this point,” you say, rolling a loose thread on your skirt between thumb and forefinger. “Does it.”

Dave opens his mouth at length. “You were everything to me.”

The words are a scalpel, cutting dead things out of you. It hurts. God, but it hurts. The pain is clean, though, and relief floods you, tinged by only a bit of guilt.

“I did love you,” you say softly, in the end. A revelation—a little wondering. A nice memory amidst the rubble.

Dave gets up and leaves.


End file.
